What is a Life or Personal Coach?

Executive coaching (or executive consulting) has been available and well used by corporations. Only recently has it become popular for people who want to achieve a more fulfilling, rewarding and balanced life.

We are all familiar with the value of coaching for athletes and sports teams (e.g., tennis coach, golf coach, track coach, football coach or baseball coach). The basic idea is the same. If you want to get better at something, call someone who can help you improve your skills.

A personal trainer can help you improve your physical fitness. A meditation teacher can help you deepen your meditations. There are voice coaches, acting coaches, and culinary coaches. Personal coaches, sometimes called “life coaches,” are usually trained mental health practitioners who have chosen to use their skills and experience to help individuals reach their potential and fulfill their goals. Today there are nearly 10,000 life coaches nationwide.

What is Dr. Miller’s Coaching Experience?

Dr. Miller has practiced personal coaching with classes, workshops, and individuals since 1969. His unique slant on the field of coaching is his use of deep relaxation, self-hypnosis, and guided imagery to help people better perceive their current challenges. As you understand better the inner blocks that are limiting your success and happiness, you become able to create new strategies and to program them into your subconscious levels using Mind Tools.

Perhaps you have had the good fortune to have a coach or mentor in your life, a trusted person to whom you could turn for wise counsel, support, and guidance. This could have been a grandmother, a respected teacher, a member of the clergy, a Scoutmaster, or even a parent. Their role was to assist you in fulfilling your dreams and aspirations or they may simply have served as role models.

A coach is a kind of “professional mentor,” except that the coach’s role is more clearly defined, so there is no other relationship to the client and therefore no hidden agenda or conflict of interest. Dr. Miller’s coaching involves using powerful Mind Tools such as deep relaxation, meditation, and self-hypnosis to help you achieve balance in your life. By bringing all the aspects of your life into harmony, the resulting synergy fairly propels you forward to realize your potential and achieve your fondest visions.

How Does Coaching Work?

Personal Excellence demonstrates how Dr. Miller approaches his coaching. As you can see, the primary focus is on growth and development of all areas of your life, not on internal stress and emotional conflict.

Often the questions you need to ask and their answers are clear but may be invisible to you because you are too close to the project or stuck in some repeating nonproductive behavior. Here is where a second pair of eyes is invaluable. In addition, Dr. Miller’s experience as a physician, healer, and coach as well as his life experience provide a veritable smorgasbord of potential knowledge, wisdom, and guidance.

Dr. Miller will help you define and clarify your values, mission, vision, and goals, then work with you as a trusted collaborator to develop and execute a plan of action to achieve the outcomes you most desire.

What is the Difference Between Coaching and Psychotherapy?

Coaching is not therapy, although therapists often include coaching as part of the therapy they render. Rather than delving into deep personal issues or resolving emotional traumas, as is the work of therapy, Dr. Miller’s coaching focuses on helping you learn to:

use powerful mind tools to align mind, body, and spirit.

clear your mind of distractions to provide more neurons to use.

set better goals.

focus your mind and your creativity.

access your deepest gifts, talents, and skills.

demand more of yourself (or less, if that is a problem).

get better results with less effort.

learn to use both positive and negative feedback wisely.

Whereas psychotherapy focuses on the past and the present, coaching focuses on the present and future. The focus is always on what behaviors to use or modify in order to reach certain goals. Psychotherapy focuses on what is wrong, coaching focuses on what is right, and how to put it to work more effectively. Psychotherapy focuses on the client’s inner world. In coaching, you focus on your entire life, including your health and wellness, performance, relationships, career, spiritual nurturance, and so forth, as a whole.

Do You Need A Coach or a Therapist?

When you are experiencing psychological pain to a degree that it is interfering with your daily life and that is not resolved by Self-Healing tools and techniques, you may need to see a therapist. The kinds of issues that may require therapy include clinical depression, severe anxiety, sexual dysfunction, significant mood disorders, psychosis, or harmful compulsions and addictions.

Psychotherapy may be indicated when there is psychological pain to a degree that interferes with the conduct of a person’s everyday life. They may experience anxiety, depression, sexual dysfunction, dysphoria, low self-esteem, lack of identity, obsessions, compulsive rituals, or a feeling that they are not functioning to capacity.

Here is a comparison of therapy and coaching:

THERAPY

COACHING

Focuses on your dysfunctions

Focuses on the abilities of a healthy client desiring a better situation

Collaboration, helping you identify challenges and turn them to victories (You are held accountable.)

Progress is often slow and painful.

Growth and progress are often rapid and usually enjoyable.

Many people who use Dr. Miller as a coach also see a psychotherapist or psychiatrist. In fact, when there has been significant need for therapy in the past, Dr. Miller often requests that an open pathway to a local therapist be available and sometimes therapy continues in parallel with the coaching. Many therapists and psychiatrists actually suggest that their patients see Dr. Miller for specific coaching in addition to their therapy. This is especially valuable when the coaching is done by phone, or over interstate lines.

How Does Coaching Work?

Coaching is most effective when there are regular, continuous appointments. These need not always be “face-to-face,” but may often be by phone or Skype. You are not limited by geography; the coaching can be done from any location.

Each appointment is usually an hour, and takes place one to four times a month. Sometimes shorter or longer appointments are advisable, and sometimes appointments may be scheduled more frequently or at longer intervals. Dr. Miller tailors his coaching to fit your lifestyle and resources.

Coaching Agreement

The purpose of this document is to clarify the nature of my coaching/educational contract with Emmett Miller.

I understand that all my appointments and other communications are for the express purpose of education and/or coaching. My expectation of Dr. Miller is that he provide experience, knowledge, training and guidance that will allow me to best utilize my own resources for managing stress, improving health, creating wellness, and optimizing my performance. This may be done through discussion, guided imagery, audio/visual materials and other coaching approaches to developing my inner capacity for self-healing and peak performance. I accept full responsibility for the choice of whether to utilize any of Dr. Miller’s suggestions, or to apply any of the principles I have learned from him.

I understand that Dr. Miller will not be providing medical or psychiatric care during these interactions. He will not make diagnoses, perform medical examinations or procedures, nor will he prescribe medication or other medical or psychiatric treatment. I agree to meet all financial responsibilities promptly and understand that I will not receive reimbursement from my medical insurance carrier.

I understand that if I have, now or in the future, need for any medical, psychiatric, psychological or any other professional health service, I will take the responsibility to find an appropriate physician, therapist or qualified helping professional for such needs.

I am the expert in my own life. I acknowledge full responsibility for myself and my choices, and agree to wholeheartedly participate and employ when needed a physician, therapist or qualified helping professional for such needs, to make my coaching experience positive and useful.

Material on this web site is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice provided by your physician or other healthcare professional. Do not use the information on this web site for diagnosing or treating any illness or disease, or as a prescription for any medication or other treatment.

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